Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

by Robert Graves

  Herod then noticed that Gemellus was behaving in a most suspicious manner – eavesdropping and turning up at his apartments at curious times. It was clear that Tiberius had set him to work. So he went once more to my mother and explained the whole case, begging her to press for a trial of the coachman, on his behalf. The excuse was to be that he wished to see the man well punished for his theft and for his ingratitude, Herod having voluntarily given him his freedom from slavery only the year before. Nothing was to be said about the man’s intended revelations. My mother did as Herod asked. She wrote to Tiberius and, after the usual long delay, back came a letter. It is now in my possession, so that I can quote the very words. For once Tiberius went straight to the point.

  ‘If this coachman means to accuse Herod Agrippa falsely of some treasonable utterance or other in order to cover his own misdoings, he has suffered enough for that folly by his long confinement in my not very hospitable cells at Misenum. I was thinking of letting him go with a caution against appealing to me in future, when about to be sentenced in the lower courts for a trivial offence like theft. I am too old and too busy to be bothered with such frivolous appeals. But if you force me to investigate the case and it turns out that a treasonable utterance was in fact made, Herod will regret having brought the matter up; for his desire to see his coachman severely punished will have brought a very severe punishment upon himself.’

  This letter made Herod all the more anxious to have the man tried, and in his own presence. Silas, who had come to Rome, dissuaded him from this, quoting the proverb: ‘Don’t tamper with Camarina’. (Near Camarina, in Sicily, was a pestilent marsh which the inhabitants drained for hygienic reasons. This exposed the city to attack: it was captured and destroyed.) But Herod would not listen to Silas; the old fellow had been growing very tiresome after five years of unbroken prosperity. Soon he heard that Tiberius, who was at Capri, had given orders for the big villa at Misenum, the one where he afterwards died, to be made ready to receive him. He immediately arranged to go down to that neighbourhood himself, with Gemellus, as a guest of Caligula, who had a villa close by at Bauli; and in the company of my mother, who was, you will recall, grandmother both to Caligula and to Gemellus. Bauli is quite close to Misenum on the north coast of the Bay of Naples, so nothing was more natural than for the whole party to go together to pay their respects to Tiberius on his arrival. Tiberius invited them all to dine on the following day. The prison where the coachman was languishing lay close by, so Herod persuaded my mother to ask Tiberius in everyone’s presence to settle the case that very afternoon. I had been invited to Bauli myself, but had declined, for neither my uncle Tiberius nor my mother was very patient of my company. But I have heard the whole story from several people who were present. It was a fine dinner and only spoilt by the great scarcity of wine. Tiberius was now following his doctors’ advice and abstaining altogether from drink, so as a matter of fact and caution nobody asked for his cup to be refilled after he had emptied it; and the waiters did not offer to do so, either. Going without wine always put Tiberius in a bad humour, but, nevertheless, my mother boldly brought up the subject of the coachman again. Tiberius interrupted her, as if unintentionally, by starting a new topic of conversation, and she made no further attempt until after dinner, when the whole party went out for a stroll under the trees surrounding the local racecourse. Tiberius did not walk: he was carried in a sedan, and my mother, who had become quite brisk in her old age, walked alongside. She said: ‘Tiberius, may I speak to you about that coachman? It is high time, surely, that his case was settled, and we should all feel much easier, I think, if you were good enough to settle it to-day, once and for all. The prison is just over there and it could be all got over in a very few minutes.’

  ‘Antonia,’ Tiberius said, ‘I have already given you the hint to leave well alone, but if you insist I shall do as you ask.’ Then he called up Herod, who was walking behind with Caligula and Gemellus, and said: ‘I am now about to examine your coachman, Herod Agrippa, at the insistence of my sister-in-law, the Lady Antonia, but I call the Gods to witness that what I am doing is not done by my own inclination but because I am forced to it.’

  Herod thanked him profusely for his condescension. Then Tiberius called for Macro, who was also present, and ordered him to bring the coachman up for trial before him immediately.

  It seems that Tiberius had enjoyed a few words in private with Gemellus on the previous evening. (Caligula, a year or two afterwards, forced Gemellus to give him an account of this interview.) Tiberius had asked Gemellus whether he had anything to report against his tutor, and Gemellus answered that he had overheard no disloyal words and witnessed no disloyal action; but that he saw very little of Herod these days – he was now always about with Caligula and left Gemellus to study books by himself instead of coaching him personally. Tiberius then questioned the boy about loans, whether Herod and Caligula had ever discussed loans in his presence. Gemellus considered for awhile and then answered that on one occasion Caligula had asked Herod about a P.O.T. loan and Herod had answered, ‘I’ll tell you about it afterwards: for little pitchers have long ears.’ Tiberius immediately guessed what P.O.T. meant. It surely meant a loan negotiated by Herod on Caligula’s behalf which would be repayable post obitum Tiberii – that is, after the death of Tiberius. So Tiberius dismissed Gemellus and told him that a P.O.T. loan was a matter of no significance and that he now had the fullest confidence in Herod. But he immediately sent a confidential freedman to the prison, who ordered the coachman, in the Emperor’s name, to disclose what remark of Herod’s he had overheard. The coachman repeated Herod’s exact words and the freedman took them back to Tiberius. Tiberius considered awhile and then sent the freedman back to the prison with instructions as to what the coachman must say when brought up for trial. The freedman made him memorize the exact words and repeat them after him, and then gave him to understand that if he spoke them properly he would be set at liberty and given a money reward.

  So there on the race-track itself the trial took place. The coachman was asked by Tiberius whether he pleaded guilty to stealing the carriage rugs. He answered that he was not guilty, since Herod had given them to him as a present but afterwards repented of his generosity. At this point Herod tried to interrupt the evidence by exclamations of disgust at his ingratitude and mendacity, but Tiberius begged him to be silent and asked the coachman: ‘What else have you to say in your defence?’

  The coachman replied: ‘And even if I had stolen those rugs, as I did not, it would have been an excusable act. For my master is a traitor. One afternoon shortly before my arrest I was driving a coach in the direction of Capua with your grandson, the Prince, and my master, Herod Agrippa, seated behind me. My master said: “If only the day would come when the old warrior finally dies and you find yourself named as his successor in the monarchy! For then young Gemellus won’t be any hindrance to you. It will be easy enough to get rid of him, and soon everyone will be happy, myself most of all.” ’

  Herod was so taken aback by this evidence that for the moment he could not think what to say, except that it was perfectly untrue. Tiberius questioned Caligula, and Caligula, who was a great coward, looked anxiously at Herod for guidance, but got none, so said in a great hurry that if Herod had made any such remark he had not heard it. He remembered the ride in the coach and it had been a very windy day. If he had heard any such treasonable words he certainly would not have let them pass but would have reported them immediately to his Emperor. Caligula was most treacherous towards his friends, if his own life was in danger, and always hung on the lightest word of Tiberius: so much so that it was said of him that never was a better slave to a worse master. But Herod spoke up boldly: ‘If your son, who was sitting next to me, didn’t hear the treasons that I am alleged to have uttered – and nobody has quicker ears than he for hearing treasons against you – then surely the coachman could not have heard them, sitting as he was with his back to me.’

  But Tiberius had already
made up his mind. He said shortly to Macro, ‘Put that man in handcuffs,’ and then to his sedan-men, ‘Proceed.’ They stepped off, leaving Herod, Antonia, Macro, Caligula, Gemellus, and the rest staring at each other in doubt and astonishment. Macro could not make out who it was whom he was supposed to handcuff, so when Tiberius, having been carried all the way round the race-track, returned to the scene of the trial, where the whole company was still standing just as he had left them, Macro asked him, ‘Pardon me, Caesar, but which of these men am I to arrest?’ Tiberius pointed to Herod and said, ‘That’s the man I mean.’ But Macro, who had great respect for Herod and hoped perhaps to break down Tiberius’s resolution by pretending to misunderstand him, once more asked, ‘You surely cannot mean Herod Agrippa, Caesar?’ ‘I mean no one else,’ growled Tiberius. Herod ran forward and all but prostrated himself before Tiberius. He did not dare to do it quite, because he knew Tiberius’s dislike of being treated like an Oriental monarch. But he stretched out his arms in a pitiful way and protested himself Tiberius’s most loyal servant and absolutely incapable of so much as admitting the least treasonable thought to cross his mind, let alone uttering it. He began to talk eloquently of his friendship with Tiberius’s dead son (a victim, like himself, of unfounded charges of treason), whose irreparable loss he had never ceased to mourn, and of the extraordinary honour that Tiberius had done him in appointing him tutor to his grandchild. But Tiberius looked at him in that cold, crooked way of his and sneered, ‘You can make that speech in your defence, my noble Socrates, when I fix the date of your trial.’ Then he told Macro, ‘Take him away to the prison yonder. He can use the chain discarded by this honest coachman-fellow.’

  Herod did not utter another word except to thank my mother for her generous but unavailing efforts on his behalf. He was marched off to the prison, with his wrists handcuffed behind him. It was a place where misguided Roman citizens who had appealed to Tiberius from sentences in lower courts were confined – in cramped and unhealthy quarters, with poor food and no bedding – until Tiberius should have time to settle their cases. Some of them had been there many years.

  Chapter 4

  HEROD, as he was being led towards the prison gates, saw a Greek slave of Caligula’s waiting there. The slave seemed out of breath, as if he had been running, and held a water pitcher in his hand. Herod hoped that Caligula had sent him there as a sign that he was still a friend, but that he could not openly declare his friendship, for fear of offending Tiberius. He called to the boy, ‘Thaumastus, for God’s sake give me a drink of water.’ It was very hot weather for September and, as I told you, there had been hardly any wine to drink for dinner. The boy came forward readily, as if he had been warned for this service; Herod, greatly reassured, put his lips to the pitcher and drank it nearly dry. For it contained wine, not water. He said to the slave: ‘You have earned a prisoner’s gratitude for this drink and I promise you that when I am free again I shall pay you well for it. I shall see that your master, who certainly is not a man to desert his friends, gives you your liberty as soon as he has secured mine, and I shall then employ you in a position of trust in my household.’ Herod was able to keep his promise and Thaumastus eventually became his chief steward. He is still alive at the time I write this, in the service of Herod’s son, though Herod himself is dead.

  When Herod was led into the prison compound it happened to be the hour for exercise, but there was a strict rule that prisoners should not converse with each other without express permission from the warders. Each group of five prisoners had a warder assigned to it who watched every movement they made. Herod’s arrival caused a great commotion among these bored and listless men, for the sight of an Eastern prince wearing a cloak of real Tyrian purple was something that had never been seen there before. He did not greet them, however, but stood gazing at the distant roof of Tiberius’s villa, as if he could read on it some message as to what his fate was to be.

  Among the prisoners was an elderly German chieftain whose history, it seems, was as follows. He had been an officer of German auxiliaries under Varus when Rome still held the province across the Rhine, and had been given Roman citizenship in recognition of his services in battle. When Varus was treacherously ambushed and his army massacred by the famous Hermann, this chieftain, although he had not (or so he said) served in Hermann’s army or given him any assistance in his plans, took no steps to prove his continued loyalty to Rome but became the head-man of his ancestral village. During the wars carried on by my brother Germanicus he left this village with his family and retired inland, returning only when Germanicus was recalled to Rome and the danger seemed past. He was then unlucky enough to be captured by the Romans in one of the cross-river raids that were made from time to time to keep our men in good fighting condition and to remind the Germans that one day the province would be ours again. The Roman general would have had him flogged to death as a deserter, but he protested that he had never shown any disloyalty to Rome, and now exercised his right as a Roman citizen to appeal to the Emperor. (In the interval, however, he had forgotten all his camp-Latin.) This man asked his warder, who understood a little German, to tell him about that melancholy, handsome young man standing under the tree. Who was he? The warder answered that he was a Jew and a man of great importance in his own country. The German begged for permission to speak to Herod, saying that he had never in all his life met a man of the Jewish race, but that he understood the Jews to be by no means inferior in intelligence or courage even to the Germans: one might learn a lot from a Jew. He added that he too was a man of great importance in his own country. ‘This place is getting to be quite a university,’ said the warder, grinning. ‘If you two foreign gentlemen care to swap philosophy, I’ll do my best to act as interpreter. But don’t expect too much of my German.’

  Now, while Herod had been standing under the tree, with his head muffled in his cloak because he did not wish the inquisitive prisoners and warders to see his tears, a curious thing had happened. An owl had perched on the branches above his head and dropped dirt on him. It is very rare for an owl to appear in broad daylight, but only the German had noticed the bird’s performance; for everyone else was so busy looking at Herod himself.

  The German, speaking through the warder, greeted Herod courteously and began saying that he had something of importance to tell him. Herod uncovered his face when the warder began speaking and replied with interest that he was all attention. For the moment he expected a message from Caligula, and did not realize that the warder was merely an interpreter for one of the prisoners.

  The warder said, ‘Excuse me, sir, but this German gentleman wants to know whether you are aware that an owl has just dropped dirt on your cloak? I am acting as this German gentleman’s interpreter. He is a Roman citizen but his Latin’s got a bit rusty in that damp climate of theirs.’

  This made Herod smile in spite of his disappointment. He knew that prisoners with nothing to do spend a great deal of their time in playing tricks on each other, and that sometimes the warders, equally bored with their duties, assist them. So he did not look up into the tree or examine his cloak to see whether the man was not perhaps making fun of him. He replied in a bantering tone: ‘Stranger things than that have happened to me, friend. A flamingo recently flew in at my bedroom window, laid an egg in one of my shoes, and then flew out again. My wife felt quite upset. If it had been a sparrow or a thrush or even an owl she would not have given the incident a second thought. But a flamingo, now…’

  The German did not know what a flamingo was, so he disregarded this sally, and went on: ‘Do you know what it signifies when a bird drops dirt on your head or shoulder? In my country it is always taken for a very lucky sign indeed. And that so holy a bird as an owl has done this and has abstained from uttering any ill-omened cries should be a sign to cause you the profoundest joy and hope. We Chaucians know all that is to be known about owls. The owl is our totem and gives our nation its name. If you were a Chaucian I should say that the God Mannus had sen
t this bird as a sign to you that as a result of this imprisonment, which will only be a short one, you will be promoted to a position of the greatest dignity in your own country. But I am told that you are a Jew. May I ask, sir, the name of the God of your country?’

  Herod, who was still not sure whether the German’s earnestness was real or assumed, answered, quite truthfully, ‘The Name of our God is too holy to be pronounced. We Jews are obliged to refer to it by periphrases, and even by periphrases of periphrases.’

  The German decided that Herod must be making fun of him and said: ‘Do not think, please, that I am saying this in the hope of any reward from you; but seeing the bird do what it did I felt impelled to congratulate you on the omen. Now I have one more thing to tell you, because I am a well-known augur in my country: when next you see this bird, though it may be in the time of your highest prosperity, and it settles near you and begins to utter cries, then you will know that your days of happiness are over and that the number of those days which still remain for you to live will be no greater than the number of cries that the owl has given. But may that day be long in coming!’